[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Shadow-People Singing Ancient Songs, Realm of Song, 5/7

[lomonaaeren]

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Did My Heart Perceive

It’s a day later that Harry finally runs Malfoy to earth.

Once he thought about it, he became sure that Malfoy was the one who sent the mead to Dumbledore. After all, it does have to be an enemy, and Dumbledore doesn’t have a lot of those among humans despite the appalling way he treats goblins. And it had to be someone who would have been invested in the consequences that would follow Dumbledore’s death, namely Voldemort deciding that now he could invade the school.

(Harry mourns the fact that if Blackeye was still in her position as Dumbledore’s Healer, this wouldn’t have happened at all, since she would have rejected the poisoned mead before it could make its way past her safeguards. But Blackeye isn’t Dumbledore’s Healer anymore, and they all have to live with the consequences. Or die of them, possibly).

That means people with the Dark Mark. Harry spends enough time listening to Snape to ensure it’s not him. But then he hears from the tapestry and the walls outside the Room of Requirement how much time Malfoy spends in there—not as much as he wants, evidently, given that the Goblin Dueling classes are held there.

Harry leans against the wall next to the tapestry and listens to its old story of teaching trolls to dance for the third time, smiling a little. Even the stories that objects tell over and over again are innocent in a way that humans’ stories never will be. The objects tell them out of sheer passion and happiness at having someone to talk to, not to make a point or score a cruel joke or scold people.

The door to the Room of Requirement opens at last. Harry straightens up. Malfoy comes out, shoulder turned to Harry at first as he carefully smooths his hand over the door and makes it vanish. Then he turns to Harry and freezes.

“You don’t have to ask it to do that,” Harry explains. “You can just come out and shut it, and the Room takes it back on its own.”

“Potter.” Malfoy is sweating, his hand clutching at his left sleeve. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you. I know you sent that poisoned mead to Dumbledore.”

Malfoy really shouldn’t be able to pale anymore, he’s so pale already, but he does. Then he snaps his wand out of its holster and glares at Harry. “Back off, Potter,” he sneers. “You have no proof.”

“Not that would satisfy a human court,” Harry admits, drawing his daggers. “But I don’t have to do that. I know that you’re Dumbledore’s enemy, you have the Dark Mark, and Snape probably wouldn’t do something like that to him. And Voldemort wants Dumbledore eliminated.” The way that Malfoy jumps at Voldemort’s name is hilarious. Why would you follow a leader whose name you dread and can’t bear to hear spoken? “So that means it was probably you.”

“It wasn’t.”

Harry rolls his eyes. He’s not insulted by the lie itself, which he knows is one from the pathetic way Malfoy is sweating and staring back and forth between Harry’s daggers and his face. He’s insulted that Malfoy is so bad at it. “If you’re going to fight with lies, you should be better at it.”

Malfoy snarls and throws a curse. Harry grounds himself in the stone of the corridor and takes the curse on his daggers, then whirls forwards.

Malfoy is pretty good at raising a shield of pure magic. Harry’s basilisk-fang blade still punctures it. He strides forwards and hurls himself at Malfoy, who retreats with a pathetic little bleat.

Harry pins him up against the wall with his daggers to Malfoy’s throat and shakes his head. “I should probably kill you right now for being a treacherous little beast, but I want to hear more about this plan.”

“There’s no plan! I—”

Harry nudges him in the temple with the hilt of Stargazer, not hard enough to knock him unconscious, but hard enough to hurt. “Talk.”

Malfoy stares at him, and Harry thinks he’s close to mindless fear. He rolls his eyes. If that happens, Malfoy will probably just start gibbering, and Harry will have to give him a Calming Draught or something.

Maybe he can fight fear with fear. Harry leans as close as he can and whispers, “I’ll feed you to the thestrals in the Forbidden Forest if you don’t speak up, Malfoy.”

Either Malfoy knows more about Harry and Luna’s friendship with the thestrals than Harry thinks likely, or the threat is ridiculous enough to jolt Malfoy into action. He sags in between Harry and the wall, and breathes hard for a second. Then he stares at Harry and thrusts his jaw out.

“The Dark Lord thinks all of us are weak,” he snaps. “The Death Eaters, I mean. He told me that I should have killed you by now if I were truly loyal to him, because I’ve had so many chances, being in the school with you and all.”

Harry privately thinks that Malfoy never had a chance, but telling him that will just delay him from telling the truth. He gives Malfoy a pointed nudge with the dagger hilt. Malfoy takes a deep breath.

“He assigned me the task of killing Dumbledore, or he would harm my family.”

Harry nods grimly as the pieces fall into place. Malfoy must be more competent at murdering people who aren’t goblins. And he probably did send Dumbledore something before the poisoned mead, but at that point, Blackeye’s precautions would have taken care of it. The mead got through once they were gone.

“And what else?” Harry asks, because he can tell when someone is hesitating.

Malfoy glares at him.

“Thestrals,” Harry says in a singsong voice, and Malfoy gasps and starts talking again. Maybe he’s just really afraid of thestrals.

“The D-Dark Lord also assigned me to find a means of bringing the Death Eaters into Hogwarts, so they could undermine security from within and attack our enemies and the people who are traitors to us.”

Snape, Harry thinks. He doesn’t know for a fact how active Snape is among the Death Eaters, or has been since his mother’s death, but the man has treachery ingrained in his bones. It makes sense that the Death Eaters, not having the means of impartial judgment like his dagger’s, would try to eliminate him.

“How close are you to accomplishing that?” Harry demands.

Malfoy meets his eyes, and suddenly, from the triumph in them, Harry has to wonder how much of the previous sickness and fear was a pretense. “I already have,” he says softly.

The door that faded into the wall, the one that leads to the version of the Room of Requirement Malfoy’s been using, opens.

Harry reacts instantly. He slams his dagger hilt into Malfoy’s temple, taking him out of the battle, and kicks the other boy behind him. Then he raises his daggers and deflects the Stunner that comes flying at him back into the room.

Someone screams. Someone else snarls. A figure that’s low and crouched to the ground like a werewolf, although it isn’t the full moon, springs past the door and charges Harry, growl reverberating from the walls.

Harry doesn’t try to close. A werewolf’s strength and speed mean he won’t be able to. He dances aside and asks the floors to help him.

As the werewolf turns to jump at Harry again, its feet abruptly sink into the stone. The creature gives an angry yelp and tries again. It sinks still further, and the stone flows towards the Death Eaters who are crowding the door of the Room of Requirement, grabbing and snatching at their feet and robe hems.

Harry meets the trapped werewolf’s eyes, and finally sees that it’s in fact a man in human form, but with long yellow fingernails and teeth that reinforce the image of him being a beast. Harry narrows his eyes. From Remus’s descriptions, he knows who this is. Fenrir Greyback, a werewolf who preys on children.

He won’t leave Hogwarts alive.

The next person out of the room is Bellatrix Lestrange, to Harry’s not-so-secret surprise. She shrieks and laughs as she aims her wand at Harry. “Itty-bitty Potter, so fun meeting like this! Going to destroy you, Itty-bitty-Potter!”

Harry ignores her taunts, although as human tactics in battle go, they could be worse. He aims his attention at the castle, skittering absently out of range of the curse that Lestrange casts at him. He’s singing now, soliciting the attention of the doors, the walls, the hallways, the stones, the brick and wood and everything else that makes up the castle and might be friends with a goblin.

Listen to me. There are intruders. Protect the children. Protect them.

There’s a long, audible groaning that ripples through the corridor as though several tons of stone are moving at once. The Death Eaters immediately lift shields above their heads, although Lestrange frowns as she does it, apparently because she has to leave off attacking Harry. Greyback is still struggling and snarling in his stone foot-prison.

Harry smiles as he hears doors slamming down many different corridors. They’ll prevent people from coming to his aid, of course, but much more important, they’ll prevent the Death Eaters from hurting innocents.

Harry’s not an innocent. He’s a trained goblin warrior, trained for exactly this sort of situation.

He rolls his head and shakes looseness and readiness into his wrists, and smiles again.


Happy Sons

Lestrange lowers her shield and aims first, which is no surprise.

Harry leaps towards her. The physical aspect of goblin dueling is something that often baffled his students in the class, and it does the same thing now. Other Death Eaters jerk back and raise their shields.

Lestrange shrieks and unleashes a dark purple curse.

Harry rolls underneath that and stabs her in the thigh with the basilisk-fang dagger.

Lestrange’s shriek becomes a real scream. Harry bounds to his feet beyond her and catches yet another Stunner on his blades. He wonders fleetingly why they seem intent on capturing him, then decides that it’s probably just part of the general Death Eater mode of operating. They probably want to torture him.

Lestrange is down, screaming, dying. Harry goes straight for one who looks a little like a seventh-year Slytherin named Yaxley. He cowers, putting his arm up, and the basilisk-fang dagger scratches him.

Scratch or stab, it doesn’t matter. Yaxley (probably) starts screaming and dying, too.

There’s a massive crunching, snapping noise, and Harry whirls to put his back to the wall and a Protego Charm up before him, in time to see that Greyback’s broken free from his stone prison. Harry has to respect him for that. The strength needed to defeat a determined floor is beyond what Harry has.

Harry feels Stargazer speed up and start humming in his left hand. Because of that, he leads the strike on Greyback when he backs through Harry’s shield with that dagger instead of the basilisk-fang one.

The moment Stargazer connects with Greyback’s face, his skin begins to burn. It’s the clear, pure flames that in part consumed the Horcrux cup when Harry destroyed it. Greyback paws at his face like a real wolf and loses all interest in cornering Harry for the moment.

Harry smiles. His mother’s protection at work against unclean things, it seems.

Of course, even though three enemies are down, there’s a lot more Death Eaters than they are Harry Potters. He gets clipped on the shoulder by a Stunner that doesn’t knock him unconscious but does weaken his arm, and he grimaces as he almost drops Stargazer. He turns that into a kneel and then a roll on the floor.

He sees at least ten wands pointed at him, and braces himself for pain.

Something flies from behind the Death Eaters and strikes one of them, cutting him almost in half. Harry blinks through the spray of blood, and more when he sees Snape standing up the corridor from them all, casting yet another curse.

At least he has a cool head in battle, Harry thinks, and fling himself at the feet of a woman backing away from Snape who isn’t looking where she’s going. She goes rolling like an idiot, and Harry leaps up cheerfully, ignoring the lingering injury to his left arm, and stabs a man who looks like the woman with the basilisk-fang dagger.

There’s more screaming and dying. Frankly, Harry is focusing more on the enemies who are alive, and on the ones that are still pouring out of the Room of Requirement through whatever means Malfoy opened.

“Snape!” he shouts.

Snape, who’s just finished murdering someone else messily with that bloody curse, turns towards Harry while lifting a shimmering shield around himself.

“They’re entering through some kind of door!” Harry shouts, and points. “Can you close it, please?” He would try to ask whatever object it is to close, but he already shouted to all the doors to close, and given that the Room of Requirement didn’t listen, the one in it must not have listened, either.

Snape nods curtly and flings himself through the door. Harry covers his back, wielding his daggers to good effect. The Death Eaters finally back up and stay mostly out of range, trying to weaken Harry’s shields and daggers with curses that mostly don’t get through but do drain his strength.

Harry calls out again to the floor at his feet, and again the stones turn to liquid and imprison the Death Eaters’ feet and legs. But that does nothing about their arms, and it seems that the Death Eaters have caught on to the fact that the stone won’t eat them. So the curses keep coming.

Harry does try to speak to their wands, but they’re all savage lust to destroy and loyalty to their wielders, and Harry doesn’t make more than a minor impression on them.

The Elder Wand is practically screaming in his robe pocket, and jumping up and down, trying to get him to take it out. Harry ignores it. It would probably try to turn the Death Eaters’ clothes into stone or something else that would show off its power but do nothing about the curses flying at Harry.

He’s bleeding from his leg and both arms, and has a dislocated shoulder, by the time something changes. The Resurrection Stone comes flying out of his pocket and lands on the floor, and with it come the shadow-people.

Harry rolls his eyes a little as he lowers his shield to catch a green curse aimed at his legs. Like that will do anything other than provide a bit of distraction. The shadow-people can’t actually hurt anyone they come into contact with—

There’s an enormous clonk, and the bell one of the shadow-people is swinging hits the nearest Death Eater’s head and takes him down.

Harry realizes that he’s gaping, and shuts his mouth in time to jink around a Killing Curse that someone near the middle of the pack is throwing at him.

The shadow-people surround the Death Eaters in a tight whirl, swinging their bells. They look like the ones that Harry saw the first time the stone sent them out: bare-legged, with large, pointed ears, and bells their only weapons. But when those bells make contact, they shatter elbows and break shoulders and cave in skulls.

Harry smiles fiercely and shifts around a little, asking the tapestry of the trolls on the floor to strangle a woman who looks like she’s recovering from the bells hitting her. The stone can be a good battle companion, after all.

“Potter.”

Harry cants his head back towards Snape’s voice without taking his eyes from the battle. “Yeah, Snape?”

If Snape is upset that Harry doesn’t address him by a title, he doesn’t show it. “The Room itself is giving the Death Eaters access,” he says grimly. “There’s a door open in the middle of the floor that must lead to the Dark Lord’s headquarters.”

“Can you destroy the door or hold it shut with something?”

“First things I tried, Potter.” A bit of the old irritation slips into Snape’s voice.

If Harry can work with the Resurrection Stone that scared Sirius, he can work with this man. “All right. I think I can do something, but you’ll need to switch places with me and hold the Death Eaters at bay for a moment. I don’t know how much longer the defense I’ve summoned will last.” In fact, some of the Death Eaters are already using shields that hold the shadow-bells at bay. Them being solid right now makes them more vulnerable to solid defenses, too.

“Go, Potter.”

They switch places abruptly, Harry hissing a little as his shoulder loses the support of the wall. It doesn’t matter. Harry runs towards what does look like a trapdoor without a cover in the middle of the Room’s floor, and he smiles grimly. Right now, no one’s coming up it, which will only make this easier.

He glances towards one of the endless piles of rubbish that are in this incarnation of the room, the same as the one that he found the diadem in, and sings out, speaking to the bristles in the brooms of it, the wooden shards of what look like doors or cabinets, the sticks that are the legs of furniture, the half-empty mirror frame still studded with shards of glass.

While they’re in the Room, they’re not part of it, and not obeying Malfoy’s request to open a way to the Death Eaters’ quarters. They quiver with happiness at someone noticing them, speaking to them, listening to them, and leap into the air and dash themselves down across the opening. Their willingness means no one’s going to shift them with a single spell.

Harry leans down and pats them, telling them thank you. Then he turns around and goes to join the fight.

Only, when he gets back into the corridor, it turns out that it’s not really a fight anymore. Snape obviously used his bloody curse, and he also used some kind of spell that must have knocked everyone out. There’s no sign of the shadow-people. Harry does notice that the Resurrection Stone is now resting in his robe pocket again, and radiating so much smugness that Harry can feel it clearly and keenly.

“Huh,” Harry says, and glances at Snape. “Your work, sir?”’

Snape pauses at the sound of the title, staring at Harry. Harry stares back evenly. The scar from Lily’s judgment through Stargazer is still on Snape’s face. It’s not like Harry has forgotten that it’s there, and he suspects Snape never will. But Snape did something other than just bullying people and acting like a git.

Harry won’t forget that.

“Yes.” Snape looks up sharply as a door slams somewhere on the seventh floor. “I think others are coming. I would prefer it if you let them think this was all your work, Potter.”

“You want me to lie?”

Snape pauses and stares at him again. “My position with the Death Eaters—”

“You know it’s gone already.” Harry nods to Malfoy, who’s unconscious still and also covered with blood from other Death Eaters, but doesn’t seem to be injured himself. Harry supposes Snape would have been careful of him, since he’s a Slytherin. “Voldemort decided to assign him a near-impossible set of tasks because he was displeased Malfoy hadn’t killed me when he’d had so many chances. What do you think Voldemort thinks of you right now?”

Snape’s eyes fall shut. “And if any of them are questioned by the Ministry…”

“Some of them will be. They’ll tell people.” Harry steps forwards. “Don’t you want to claim being on the right side for once, Snape?”

There’s a long moment when all sorts of tensions and expressions flit across Snape’s face. Harry doesn’t know exactly what he’s feeling, of course. He’s never been a person like Snape.

But he has seen that even the worst humans can learn better.

Snape jerks his head and nods, once, before turning and striding off. Harry takes stock of his injuries and sighs a little. He supposes that he’ll have to let Madam Pomfrey heal at least some of them; he’ll send a message through the tunnels, but it won’t get there in time for Blackeye to arrive before then.

Dumbledore storms into view, and comes to a halt, staring, thunderstruck, at the bloody mess of the corridor, littered with sliced-up Death Eaters, unconscious Death Eaters, and Death Eaters who have died messily of basilisk venom.

“Hi,” Harry says, waving with his mostly uninjured arm.

Faceted With Light

“That you told all the doors to shut and hold us prisoner…”

Hermione is fuming at him. Harry rolls his eyes and doesn’t care if she sees it. As if he wants his friends, most of whom are doing pretty well at Goblin Dueling but none of whom are fully trained warriors, rushing into danger.

“Your door needs some coddling,” Luna tells Hermione seriously.

Hermione glares at Luna and then looks away. Harry will keep an eye on that situation. He doesn’t think Hermione really resents Luna so much as she resents him for keeping her out of the fight, but he won’t let that build up into a situation that could cause more bullying for poor Luna.

“You could have let me fight.”

Harry smiles apologetically at Ginny. They’re sitting at the Ravenclaw table, all his friends jammed together, and it doesn’t matter what House they’re in. The only one who seems to have a real problem with it is Michael, and he’s sulking down at the end, anyway. Harry wonders if he’s figured out how to ask Luna to Hogsmeade yet. “I know, sorry. But I didn’t have the time to sort out people who could fight from people who couldn’t, and I wasn’t sure where you were.”

Ginny nods, mollified. Harry’s glad. He has been healed, but he’s still sore and aching, and Ginny’s fresh, with her knives sharp.

Harry glances over at the Slytherin table. Malfoy is sitting there among the other students. Dumbledore justified that with some nonsense about how Malfoy’s not of age yet and was obviously forced to take the Mark against his will, so he couldn’t really have known what he was doing.

Harry knows, actually, that Malfoy turned of age two days ago. A dueling challenge will be waiting for him over the summer.

Dumbledore coughs and clears his throat. “Another year gone. I must thank the students for—for making this an interesting—year.” He trails off and stares over at Harry for a second. Harry watches, waiting. He has tactics prepared if Dumbledore tries to continue this nonsense of removing the goblin classes from the school.

It seems he’ll have to use them. Dumbledore turns back and continues with a false expression of regret. “Of course, we will need to remove the Creature Culture classes and the Goblin Dueling class, as no NEWT in them can be granted, and—”

“You’re removing them from the school,” Harry says, letting his voice resound. “Why?”

Dumbledore barely glances at him. “Goblins don’t belong in a human school, Harry.”

“But Death Eaters do?” Harry turns and looks directly at Malfoy.

Malfoy goes that ghost-pale color he did when Harry first confronted him again. Dumbledore looks agitated. “Now, Harry, there is no proof that Mr. Malfoy is a Death Eater—”

Harry spoke with a goblet on the Slytherin table earlier, and it agreed to help him. Now, it falls, aiming straight for Malfoy’s left arm. He’s too shocked or surprised to get out of the way, and the sleeve pulls back and clearly shows the Dark Mark.

Screaming chaos erupts.

Dumbledore is shouting something and shooting off purple bangs from his wand to get people’s attention. Harry watches Malfoy, who is looking around frantically, as if trying to figure out how this happened. Harry catches his eye and mouths, You’re of age.

Malfoy shudders as if he’s going to faint. The people on either side of him, who look as if they know perfectly well which way the wind is blowing, lean in on either side of him and keep him from falling—or bolting.

“This is unacceptable!” Dumbledore yells when the noise has receded somewhat. “To reveal a student’s allegiance, a choice that was made by force, and discriminate against him for it—”

“The way that you discriminate against goblins?” Hermione calls out. She’s quivering with fury, which makes Harry smile, glad that her anger has found another target. “There aren’t any laws that say you can ban goblin classes or goblins from Hogwarts just because you say so!”

“Mr. Potter,” Snape says, in such a surprise that Harry would have dropped his daggers if he were holding them, “defended us all against the Death Eaters that Mr. Malfoy let into the school. If you believe that Mr. Malfoy is more deserving of protection than Mr. Potter and his kind, Albus, I wonder if you should not be checked by a Mind-Healer.”

Dumbledore stares in several different directions. Lots of students are glaring at him, even among the Gryffindors. Probably all of them are thinking about how they could have been murdered in their beds if not for Harry and Snape, whose part in the story is widely-known, as it deserves to be.

Dumbledore closes his eyes. “Very well,” he says, his teeth obviously grinding. “The Goblin Dueling and Creature Culture classes will remain on the schedule for next term.”

There’s a loud cheer from all directions. Harry settles back and nods to Snape, who gives him a nod back, his face like steel. Harry reckons that he’s already thinking about how he’ll need to go into hiding from Voldemort and the Death Eaters.

But at least he’ll have the money to do so, Harry thinks, because Harry’s clan will open Gringotts to him if he comes. They’ll do the same for Hermione, and Luna, and Ginny, and anyone else who can sincerely claim friendship or alliance with the goblins.

And the school will probably remember the news of that rebellion, as soon as the excitement of yesterday’s attack has faded.

Harry smiles into his goblet, and ignores the look that Dumbledore shoots him. It didn’t have to be this way. The man is just too stubborn to listen.